


Old Friends

by MayRaven1798



Category: My So-Called Life
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:42:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23686363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayRaven1798/pseuds/MayRaven1798
Summary: A short piece...because why not? Angela is having a bad summer.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 3





	1. Mean Reds

**Author's Note:**

> Italics are Angela’s inner monologue.

**Mean Reds**

_“I remember watching ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ one rainy Sunday afternoon. I couldn’t have been more than ten years old. Audrey Hepburn’s character was talking about the mean reds. This was supposedly that horrible state of mind that was just on the other side of the blues. I was a kid and thought it was such a strange thing to say. But today...today I think I finally know what Holly Golightly was talking about. Today I have the mean reds.”_

Angela slammed the front door and stormed up the stairs. It had been two weeks since her father broke the news of his affair with his business partner Hallie Lowenthal. Her mother took to her bed the day after she threw him out with every last one of his worldly possessions.

The sixteen year old had been in a foul mood for days. She had been working at her father’s restaurant under his secret mistress for weeks into the summer break when her world was flipped upside down. She never wanted to go back there; never wanted to see that horrible woman or her lying, cheating father again.

_“To make matters worse, Jordan Catalano, my supposed boyfriend just accused me of taking everything too personally. He dared to rationalize that parents have their own problems and I shouldn’t get so wrapped up in them. This wasn’t really just about my parents. This was my life.”_

Angela blasted her music as her younger sister called up the stairs. It only made her turn it up louder. Danielle opened her bedroom door without knocking.

“Angela I have dance class to get to,” her sister whined. “Mom said you would take me.”

“Buzz off, Danielle,” Angela huffed and threw a pillow at her in defiance. “Just because I have my license it does not mean that I am your personal chauffeur!”

“Someone has to take me!” She shouted back and crossed her arms in front of her chest.

“Why don’t you call Dad? I’m sure he’d love to take you!” Angela yelled her response. “Now shut up, or you’ll upset Mom.”

Danielle walked over to her sister’s player and turned it off. She stuck her tongue out childishly and left the room, leaving the door open behind her. When Angela got up to shut it again she heard her sister leave out the front door. She didn’t care. As far as she was concerned Danielle was being a brat.

A few hours later Angela woke from an impromptu nap to murmurs from downstairs. She could just make out her sister and a male voice. The red haired girl was sure that her spoiled sister had called their father.

_“Sometimes I just cannot believe the sheer inconsiderate nature of my baby sister. How can she actually believe it is okay to invite that deceitful man back into our home.”_

As Angela reached the bottom of the stairs she realized something about the house was different. Someone had tidied up the living room.

Since their mother was basically incapacitated by her depression, Angela had struggled to keep up the household chores. She finally gave up a few days ago. As she walked through the dining room she noted the same absence of clutter and mess.

The girl pushed through the swinging door to their kitchen. It wasn’t Graham Chase in the kitchen with Danielle. It was so much worse. It was their neighbour, Brian Krakow.

“There really is only one thing worse than having your world fall apart; and that’s having other people witness it. Brian Krakow is the absolute last person I want to see my world for the tragedy it’s become.”

“Danielle, what is going on?” Angela barked at her little sister. “Why is Krakow in our kitchen cleaning our dirty dishes?”

“You wouldn’t take me to my dance class,” she explained innocently. “I told Brian and he took me because he’s a decent person.”

Angela gaped at the eleven year old for a moment and then turned her glare on Brian. He took a step back instinctually and put his hands up.

“I just wanted to help,” Brian told her in earnest.

“Oh did you?” Angela asked in an accusatory tone as she moved past her sister and cornered the other teen against the stove. “Does it make you feel superior to see how garbage my life is? Are you just basking in the absence of my useless boyfriend who lacks any empathy to the disaster that is my home?”

The boy’s eyes went wide and his eye brows shot up under his curly blond fringe. “God, no,” Brian said nervously. “I just felt bad.” As the words left his mouth he knew they were the wrong ones. “I mean, I had some time. We’ve been friends most of our lives...”

“Friends?” Angela scoffed. “We are not friends,” she told him as she nudged him in the chest with her index finger. “You’re obsessed with me. You were looking for any excuse. What—are you going to do my laundry next? Steal some of my underwear?”

The boy went pale and then bright red from ear to ear. He was clearly appalled by her accusation, but somehow could not find the words to retaliate.

_“Why do I have to do that? Maybe he really does want to help. Why do I have to be so mean to him all the time now? Why can’t I just accept that he isn’t my annoying neighbour anymore. Why can’t I see him as the sensitive, caring person he’s become?... Because then I would have to admit I was wrong about him.”_

“Leave him alone!” Danielle said coming to her friend’s defence. “He was helping me. Geez, Angela. You’re not the center of the whole universe, or whatever.”

“What is going on down here?” asked Bernice, Brian’s mother, who had suddenly appeared in the doorway. “Girls, I finally convinced your mother to get out of bed...Can you at least pretend to behave yourselves?”

All three nodded in silence, even Brian. The smartly dressed woman looked them over for a second time. “Now, Patricia is going to have a shower and get dressed. Brian please go home and get the food I prepared so she doesn’t have to worry about dinner tonight.”

The boy did as his mother asked and went around the kitchen island the other way as to avoid Angela.

_“Bernice Krakow is a behavioural therapist. It figures she would know how to get my mother functioning again. I’m a little sorry I hadn’t thought of getting her help myself. Though now I’m left to wonder. Did she volunteer, or was she only here by Brian’s request?”_

Later that night Angela helped Danielle clean up after dinner. Patty was looking a little brighter and told her girls at dinner that she would try to do better. Bernice was going to help her work on getting back on track and get back to the office.

Danielle followed their mother upstairs to get ready for bed. It was a little past nine-thirty. Angela no longer had a job to go to and wasn’t even sure she had a boyfriend anymore. So she threw herself on the couch in the front room and turned the television on.

Unfortunately, summer meant reruns, so there wasn’t really anything to watch. Just as she gave up and switched the screen off again there was a knock at the front door.

Angela slowly approached the curtain at the window beside the door. She very tentatively looked out into the dark, having forgotten to put the porch light on. For the first time she realized that they were without a man in the house and she felt a little afraid.

“ _It’s more likely to be Jordan than a serial killer. But it’ll be that one time that our guards are down that it is in fact a serial killer...”_

It was Brian. The red haired girl let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and she flipped on the porch light. As she opened the door, she couldn’t help but smile at the halo effect the yellow light had on the boy’s crown of curls.

“Did you really need to come to get your mother’s casserole dish tonight?” she asked him with a touch snark in her voice.

“What? No,” Brian said with a shake of his head. “I just wanted to see if you needed anything.”

“Like what?” she replied suspiciously, looking him up and down.

“Nothing, forget it,” he huffed. The girl was driving him crazy and he had handed her the keys. “Forget I was here.”

“Wait,” she called out to stop him. She waited a beat until he turned back around. “Thank you,” she told him with a sad smile.

_“It was the perfect opportunity for him to gloat. He could hold my humility over my head for the rest of the summer. Maybe the rest of the year.”_

“Anytime,” was his only response. And then he turned again and crossed the street back to his house.

Angela closed the door and locked it. She leaned her back to the wood for a moment as sheslowly discovered that she wasn’t angry anymore. Had Brian actually succeeded where everyone else had failed her?

_“Sometimes a person will surprise you. Even a person you didn’t feel you could relate to in any way, shape, or form. A person you basically treated like they were invisible for months. A person who deserves someone better than you for a friend.”_


	2. Trust

**Trust**

_  
“Growing up is hard. I’m starting to believe that growing pains are not just physical. They are psychological too. I find giving a person the benefit of the doubt almost impossible now. How can I possibly be open to another person’s perspective when so many people I trusted have betrayed me?”_

Angela crossed the street the short distance to her neighbour’s house to return the ceramic dish to Bernice Krakow. It was an awkward chore, but she decided to be polite and feign gratitude for the meal that had been provided.

As the girl stepped up onto the porch she turned and looked up into the top of the maple in the front yard. Often times, Brian would be up there reading, or watching for her. It didn’t appear that he was in his perch today.

With a sigh, Angela pressed the bell and stood back; holding the cookware in front of her. After a moment she heard someone approach the door. It was Brian. He opened the door and took the proffered dish.

“Thanks, Chase,” Brian said with a half grin. “I know my mom will be happy to have this back.”

“Well, thank her again,” Angela said politely, “you know, from my mom.”

The boy nodded and was about to close the door when a most peculiar thing happened. Angela swore she saw a girl walk by behind her neighbour.

“Um, Krakow, who was that?” she ask in an almost sing-song manner.

“What? No one,” he told her innocently. “You must be seeing things,” he added and tried to close the door. It was easy for the red haired girl to stop his efforts since his hands were full.

Angela entered the house and looked off past the kitchen in the direction she was sure the figure was headed. She started towards the back door. Brian quickly put down the dish and followed behind her.

“Angela, you can’t just barge into a person’s home,” he chastised her as he caught up.

It was already too late. Angela slid open the sliding door and stepped onto the back patio. Rayanne Graff was trying to balance herself into a large hammock that had been tied between two trees in the yard. As the two watched she flipped herself completely over and landed in the grass.

_“It was one of those terrible moments. Like a waking nightmare. Why on earth would someone like Rayanne Graff be messing around in the backyard of someone like Brian Krakow. This could not be a real thing. I had to be imagining it.”_

“Whoa! These things are harder to get into than you’d think,” Rayanne called from the ground. She slowly stood and dusted the grass off her bare legs. “They should have a warning on them, or something.”

“Rayanne?” Angela managed to say the girl’s name.

“Oh hey, Angela,” she said back as if everything was normal. “How are you at getting into one of these things?”

“I told you to wait and I would hold it for you,” Brian commented from beside Angela. Then he walked over to the other girl and stabilized the hammock for her to try again.

“What is even going on?” Angela demanded. It was like an episode of the twilight zone.

“Brian is being a pal and assisting me,” Rayanne explained in a very literal way.

“Since when is Brian your pal?” Angela asked skeptically.

Rayanne finally settled into the middle of the hammock and put her hands behind her head. “Um, since a while now,” she stated plainly.

“Calm down, Chase,” Brian told her with a laugh. “The fact that you hadn’t even noticed that we were friends until now just proves how little you should actually be bothered.”

_“Friends. He had actually used the word. I wanted to vomit. Rayanne was a terrible friend, which I suppose made Brian just as terrible by association. Maybe I had been right about him. Maybe he wasn’t so mature after all.”_

Angela turned on her heel and went back inside. Brian followed her again. It was like a compulsion; he had no choice in the matter.

“Angela, stop,” he requested as the girl reached for his front door. She did as he asked and turned to face him, keeping her eyes on the floor.

“Why her?” she asked, obviously hurt by his betrayal. “What could you possible see in her?”

Brian fixed his childhood friend with an odd look. His momentary silence caused her to look up at the boy’s face. She couldn’t quite get a read on his expression.

“We’re just friends,” he reiterated, narrowing his eyes at her. “Or as Rayanne likes to say; we’ve formed our own support group,” he added as he crossed his arms.

“Is that meant to be funny?” Angela asked, still unsure of his full meaning.

“Only if it’s funny that you treat your friends so poorly that they have to band together to feel better about themselves,” Brian explained without humour.

“That’s so unfair,” she spat back at him. “You can’t even begin to know what my life has been like.”

“And you can’t begin to know what my life has been like,” he retorted sourly and tilted his head, “or Rayanne’s life. Because you don’t care.”

Angela gaped at his audacity. Sure, she had been wrapped up in Jordan and her family drama most of the summer, but that didn’t mean she didn’t care about her friends. True Rayanne was not someone she would consider a friend any longer. And perhaps things had been strained with Brian. She still didn’t feel he had the right to act like she was some sort of villain.

“ _Is that, like, all I am now? Some conceited, villainous person that no one wants to be around. It would almost be easier if I had caught them fooling around, or having sex. But for Brian to stand there and defend Rayanne as his friend was the worst thing he could do.”_

Angela’s lower lip began to wobble as the full emotional impact of his words hit her. Tears stung at her eyes and she turned and fled from the house. Once again as if possessed, the boy followed her.

“Angela, come on,” he called after her. “Fight back.”

She stopped dead in her tracks at the edge of the front lawn, under the large maple. She did not turn around, but continued to look away from him.

“Why should I?” she asked, her voice trembling. “It sounds like you’ve already made up your mind.”

Brian dared to move around in front of the girl and bent down in an attempt to make eye contact. “Angela, look at me,” he asked her softly, but she wouldn’t.

Every time he moved into her sightline she defiantly looked in the opposite direction. Finally, not knowing what else to do, he took her face in both hands and held her still. Her hands flew up to hold his wrists, but she didn’t try to pull away.

“Angela, I’m sorry,” he said in almost a whisper. “We really are just friends. I didn’t mean to be so cruel. I thought we were arguing, you know, like we used to. I miss that.”

“ _Brian missed me. The strange thing was—as he said it—I knew I had missed him too. He was annoying; aggravating even. But after I rejected him and chose Jordan—after the letter—he wasn’t around like before. Now, when I needed someone I managed to take him for granted—again.”_

“I guess I didn’t realize that maybe I missed you too,” Angela said slowly, sniffling back a tear. She finally looked into his eyes; her green met his grey and she smiled. Suddenly, she became very aware that he was still holding her face in his hands and she blushed.

“Sometimes I wonder what might have happened that night, if Catalano hadn’t interrupted us,” he mused in a far off way. “If I had had the nerve to kiss you.”

“Why don’t you find out?” she said as she arched her eyebrow, almost daring him into action.

“I thought you thought I was some creepy stalker who wanted to steal your underwear?” he teased nervously.

“Shut up and kiss me,” she told him with a chuckle. Brian smiled at her and did as she asked, since it would now be rude not to.

_“Brian Krakow is an intellectual who overthinks everything. I can’t help but wonder how many times he’s thought about this kiss—his first one—with me. How many different ways he could do it? Should it be sweet and chaste, or maybe a little grown up?_ _Turns out, when it comes to kissing, Brian turns his brain off. He was possessive and messy, but not in a bad way. He kisses a lot like Jordan does...like he’s already half way to having sex and all the things he wants to do to me.”_

Angela pulled away with a gasp and took a step back. Brian’s face fell as he watched her reaction. Clearly, he felt she was rejecting him.

“I’m sorry,” he said as his face filled with worry. “I guess I got carried away.”

The girl touched her lips. “Don’t apologize. I was just surprised,” she confessed shyly and stepped closer again.

The boy smiled and kissed her again. This time he was a little more controlled, more thoughtful.It was Brian who pulled away first this time.

“I should go,” he said a little reluctantly. “I left Rayanne sitting in the hammock and I would hate for her to break her neck trying to out again.”

Angela couldn’t help but laugh as she replayed the scene in her mind; the clumsy flip to the ground. It was such a Rayanne thing to do.

“Yeah, you wouldn’t want to have to explain that to your parents,” she joked with a lightheartedair.

“I can come by later to see if you need anything,” he offered kindly, but she knew he didn’t really need a reason to come to her house to see her.

“Sure,” she said as she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “If you want.”

Angela watched as Brian disappeared back inside.

“ _It’s funny how sometimes you have to stumble in life to discover what really matters. Maybe I wasn’t just wrong about Brian, but about myself. Maybe some people are worth your trust. People who can help you through those growing pains and offset the damage you may incur if left to your own devices.”_


End file.
